We arrived at the Frolicking Foal Tavern forty minutes early for my meeting with IPsWitch. She’d picked the location, not me.
The place was built around the Shitty-Dive checklist. Sticky tables and uneven wooden floors. Check. Sauce-spattered menus. Check. Mr. Grizzled, the surly and heavily tattooed barkeep. Check. Dark-at-noon lighting. Check. Scary as hell back alley location. Double check. The only things missing were a one-eyed, three-legged dog and terrible food. The latter being a pleasant distraction from the rest of the cesspool we’d waded into. Generally speaking, the wings and lamb sliders were excellent.
“A shame that Rushdam guy was such a creep. I thought he was kind of a stud,” I said, taking a swig of beer to cool my burning mouth.
Marshal didn’t look up from dabbing his wing into the blue cheese dressing pooled in his plate. “He’s gay.”
I laughed. “Not even. He’s just a pretentious academic snob.”
Marshal scrunched his shoulders as if to say suit yourself.
Things started clicking. Rushdam had been impeccably dressed and overly aloof. I’d thought of his cool regard as disdain, but now I was thinking something else entirely.
“How do you do that?” I asked.
“What?” Marshal asked, dabbing the corner of his mouth with his napkin, trying to hide a know-it-all grin.
“You know damned well what. The gay-dar. My best friend is gay, and I still can’t tell you who is, and who isn’t. And I wonder why I can’t find a date…”
Marshal heaved with laughter.
What an asshole.
Once he’d collected himself, and after I’d chunked my own wadded up napkin at his head, he said, “You can’t find a date because you’re a standoffish, heterosexual woman, who only leaves her house to play with computers and shoot guns. Besides, you’re always better at spotting your own. Take you and Sarah hitting it off earlier. Did you really need anyone to tell you she’d be someone like you?”
He had a point. I supposed finding your herd was something of a survival instinct.
As Marshal and I quibbled over the last wing, I registered a person nestled in a darkened booth in a far corner. I thought it curious in an empty bar that the only other person would be sitting so dangerously close to the dartboard. A sweatshirt with the hood pulled up obscured the portions of her face the shadows hadn’t already eaten up.
It hadn’t been that cold outside had it?
Mr. Grizzled arrived to take away our plates.
“Anything else?” His voice wasn’t even a growl, just a rumble in his massive chest. Before we could answer, he walked away.
Marshal smirked. “He’s a charmer.”
I shushed him, as Grizzled was already making his way back with our bill. I’d seen too many horror movies with that guy in them, and I had no intention of being the meat in next week’s soup du jour.
Grizzled slapped the bill down. “Lady in the corner wants to talk.”
He eyed the area near the dartboard. We followed his gaze. Sweatshirt-woman nodded, almost imperceptibly, in our direction.
Time to get some information. The old fashioned way…
I placed an extra twenty on the table. “Keep the change. You know her?”
Grizzled stared at me, an irritated I’d just as soon be taking a healthy dump look on his angry, bearded face. He stuffed the money into a stained apron.
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Witch's Nocturne, Moonsongs Episode 2
ParanormalAfter receiving an ancient tribal journal from her grandfather, Jenny is sent on a mission of discovery in an attempt to unravel clues to her family's monster hunting past. The journey becomes more than academic when she is asked to confront a coven...
